Periscope: Stoppage time for the office

The U.S. soccer team had a nice run in the World Cup before getting the boot in the Round of 16 at the hands – or rather feet – of the Belgians.

The tournament has enthralled Americans like no World Cup before, with 20 million tuning in to watch the U.S. team play to an exhilarating loss against Germany. But it was enough for the U.S. to advance to the next round. The idea that a loss might be exhilarating spawned quick debate in The Journal Record newsroom, dividing those who think the beautiful game is the world’s finest sport from those who think it isn’t nearly as beautiful as a 6-4-3 double play.

Soccer, as reporter Molly Fleming pointed out, doesn’t even have a squeeze play.

Nonetheless, American office workers are buying up Nike jerseys with the U.S. team crest at prices usually reserved for Garth Brooks concert tickets. On-the-clock staffers root passionately for countries they couldn’t spell three weeks ago. March Madness week looks productive by comparison.

My solution: stoppage time. Like soccer, the office clock should just run down its eight-hour day, then a manager would declare that a certain amount of time – say two-and-a-half hours – shall be added to the workday to make up for the time work stopped to root for those fun-loving Argentinians to beat the comparatively stoic Swiss.

With the U.S. out of it, expect the World Cup to be forgotten as quickly as 2012′s Olympic beach volleyball gold-medal game, which was all the rage for about 17 minutes.

Historically, U.S. interest in soccer stops with the post-game juice pouches. The best the United States has ever done in World Cup play was a semifinal loss to Uruguay, and that was in 1930. We played again in 1934, but in the next 26 years, the U.S. showed up just once, in 1950. The tournament was in Brazil.

Not a single U.S. newspaper sent a reporter to cover the team. But in St. Louis, there was a reporter at the Post-Dispatch who so badly wanted to cover it that when his editors declined, he took vacation time and headed for Brazil on his own nickel. And on June 29, 1950, Dent McSkimming saw the Miracle Game.

The U.S. squad was a hopeless underdog in a group with Spain, Chile and the powerhouse team from England. The Americans, a ragtag bunch of semi-pro players, had lost their last seven international games by a combined score of 45–2. Defender Walter Bahr was a high school PE teacher; goaltender Frank Borghi drove a hearse for his uncle’s funeral parlor. At the tournament’s start, the oddsmakers gave 3-1 for England to win it all, while the odds against the U.S. taking the title were 500-1. London’s Daily Express wrote ahead of the U.S. game that, ”It would be fair to give them three goals of a start.”

In group play, the Americans dutifully lost to Spain and eventually lost to Chile. But in the second game, against England, Bahr’s shot was redirected into the net with a header by Joe Gaetjens for the game’s only goal and the U.S. team’s only victory.

For soccer’s greatest upset, the Post-Dispatch ran only a wire story on June 30. McSkimming later filed a story about the players’ reactions that was published July 16, 1950.

McSkimming wrote that if the U.S. had played against Chile as they played England, the team might have won that game as well. Then he quoted a lighthearted Walter Giesler, president of the U.S. Soccer Football Association.

“But it’s difficult enough trying to explain how we beat England,” Giesler said. “If we had whipped Chile too, the job of telling how and why would have exhausted our boys.’”

Fortunately, we won’t wear them out about talking about how they beat the Belgians.